Bromme, R., Stahl, E., Bartholomé, T., & Pieschl, S. (in press). The case of plant identification in biology: When is a rose a rose? Development of expertise as acquisition and use of robust and flexible knowledge. In H. P. A. Boshuizen, R. Bromme & H. Gruber (Eds.), Professional learning: Gaps and transitions on the way from novice to expert (pp. 29-47). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Press. Series on Innovation and Change in Professional Education.
Constructivist approaches provide a promising basis for promoting the development of expertise. If such approaches are used as heuristics in planning teaching methods, it should be possible to foster the understanding of relevant concepts within a domain, as well as the application of knowledge to the demands of different contextual cases. Consequently, an acquisition of robust and flexible knowledge, a necessary component of experts’ knowledge, can be achieved. On the other hand there are curricular restrictions - like the limited time scheduled for teaching a topic - that often inhibit the integration of constructivist approaches into real curricula. A discrepancy of this kind between methods that are appropriate to support the development of expertise and, on the other hand, what can actually be offered on university courses, can be found in many disciplines.
In this chapter we present an example of this discrepancy taken from the sub-domain of plant identification in biology. One of the classical tasks of biology is the description and classification of plants within taxonomies of families, genera, species and subspecies. Accordingly, identifying plants constitutes an essential competence of biologists that has been taught at German universities since 1852. Today, knowledge about plant identification is required by a wide range of occupational groups, e.g. biologists, landscape ecologists, geographers, pharmacists, etc. At the same time, there has been a substantial decline of expertise in this domain over the last decades. Most students nowadays develop only rudimentary knowledge about plant identification, and are far from developing an appropriate degree of expertise. Furthermore, the number of professional experts in this domain is already small and decreasing. This paradox between the importance of the knowledge on the one hand and the decrease of expertise on the other hand can be explained by the complexity of the necessary knowledge and increasing limitations of time in the curricula.
As a result botanists are interested in finding new didactic ways to support the development of expertise within this domain. An interactive learning environment on the basis of heuristics derived from constructivist approaches has been developed and integrated into existing courses. The learning environment can be used to support learning within the university courses as well as independent case-based learning beyond the courses. We present this example from the domain of biology to show how a constructivist interactive learning environment can be designed for university courses to combat existing problems and support the development of expertise. One of the most important prerequisites for developing this system was the analysis of botanists’ cognitive processes involved in plant identification. We therefore present our approaches for examining these cognitive processes in more detail.
